Today I attended a presentation on the development of virtual patients learning units with open source tools. The session was lead by Rachel Ellaway, Assistant Dean, Informatics and David Topps, Associate Professor, Clinical Informatics, Northern Ontario School of Medicine. The presenters stepped us through the use of Vue (Visual Understanding Environment) and OpenLabyrinth for the development of highly interactive, low bandwidth problem based learning units. I was amazed at how quickly the units could be developed; the number of decision point could be designed into the scenarios, and the ability to repurpose portions of the units in other activities.
Click on the following links to download the Vue and OpenLabyrinth, or to view sample cases.
- Vue Software – concept and content mapping application. (Site offers versions for PCs and Macs)
- OpenLabyrinth – application for designing virtual patient and other decision path activities – (current version available for PC only. According to the presenters a cross platform version scheduled to be released in December)
- Virtual patient demos developed with labyrinth
- Pine (Pathways for Interactive Narrative
Education) Project – site provides links to medical, patient education, midwifery, interprofessional, nursing, and rural health emergency virtual cases and associated development documents that are available to all site visitors.
